Man Shoots Couple Then Kills Himself

A retired Midlothian man who police said had been receiving psychiatric treatment told two longtime friends Wednesday that he was ``going crazy,``

then shot and wounded them and killed himself.

Police in the south suburb said William Bima, 65, of 14555 S. Springfield Ave., went to the home of neighbors Leo and Eugenia Nawracaj at about 9 a.m. and shot the couple, then turned the gun on himself.

Leo Nawracaj, 64, was shot in the left arm and right cheek and his 61-year-old wife was shot in the chest, neck and face. Both were reported in critical but stable condition. Nawracaj was being treated in the University of Chicago`s Bernard Mitchell Hospital and his wife was in St. Francis Hospital, Blue Island.

Bima shot himself once in the head with a .38 caliber snub-nosed revolver, police said. He was taken to Ingalls Memorial Hospital, Harvey, where he died at 1:05 p.m.

According to Midlothian Police Sgt. John Bittin, Bima went over to the Nawracajs` house down the block and asked to talk with Leo Nawracaj. Bittin said Nawracaj invited Bima in to look at photographs taken at the October wedding of the Nawracajs` youngest daughter, Jan, at which Bima was a guest.

While the two men were sitting in the living room, Bima stood up and said, ``I`m going crazy,`` then shot Nawracaj. When Eugenia Nawracaj came into the room to check on the commotion, Bittin said Bima shot her and then himself.

The woman managed to get to the telephone and call police. She was found by police on the kitchen floor and the two men were found on the living room floor.

Bittin said Bima, a retired security officer at Wyman-Gordon Co., a crankshaft manufacturing plant in Harvey, had been feeling depressed lately, and was seeing a psychiatrist. Police said he had seen a doctor on Tuesday and had been placed on the waiting list for admission to the psychiatric unit at Christ Hospital, Oak Lawn.

Bima`s wife, Vi, was in a crocheting class at the Midlothian library a block away when she learned of the shooting. The couple has two daughters, one of whom is a Midlothian police radio operator.

The shooting Wednesday left the quiet neighborhood of modest one-story homes in a state of shock. Few of the residents had any explanation for the shooting except to say that Bima had apparently been depressed since his retirement two years ago.

``I just can`t figure it, why he would walk out of his house and go over there to his neighbors and shoot them,`` said one man who described himself as a friend of both families.

Caryl Arndt, who has lived across the street from the Bimas and next door to the Nawracajs for 17 years, called the Bimas ``just ordinary retired people. They go out for shows and out to eat--they`re just ordinary retired people.``

``We were all friends, but we all kept to ourselves,`` she said. ``But we would help each other out if anyone needed it.``